Some of your products are winners and some are duds. It’s all part of the Amazon game. But what if all of your products were winners? What if every single one was a cash cow?
While Amazon is constantly changing and product trends come and go, relying on data allows you to essentially guarantee a product’s success. As you’re looking for the next widget to add to your expanding product line, don’t jump in blind and hope for the best. Instead, dive deep into market data and market trends to confidently determine exactly what kind of success you are able to achieve.
Using Data to Ensure Your Success
The foundation of a successful Amazon business is the ability to quickly and confidently source great products at the right price. We see numerous sellers each month struggling to succeed as a result of poor product selection.
To help guarantee the success of your next product, consider these five tips for understanding and utilizing data in your market research.
Use a Comprehensive Approach to Estimating Sales
There are many Amazon product research tools available on the market, each with different ways of estimating sales. Many use snapshot sales estimates, meaning they’re looking at the Best Seller Rank (BSR) at one moment in time and estimating sales based on where the product is ranking now.
For example, for a product ranking #10,000 in Sports and Outdoors right now, these tools estimate 300 sales over the past 30 days. However, if that BSR jumps to #5,000 in a matter of hours, the sales estimate will jump to 500. So, depending on what day or time of day you look, you could be getting totally different sales estimates. As a result, using snapshot estimates for sourcing decisions can be extremely dangerous and provide unrealistic expectations leading to unsuccessful sourcing decisions.
Other product research tools use comprehensive sales estimates, which look at the Best Seller Rank and all its fluctuations over the past 30 days to estimate sales based on historical data. Vital Launch’s Market Intelligence looks at BSR multiple times/day to provide an average, which is translated to an estimated sales number for each day. Those daily estimates are then used to arrive at an estimated monthly sales number. To ensure that your product’s sales will correspond with your expectations, it’s crucial to use comprehensive estimates.
Understand the Market’s Trends
Sales, price, and review trends are all huge factors in determining a market’s potential. Without digging into these trends, one cannot possibly predict a product’s long-term success. A 30-day sales estimate just doesn’t paint the full picture. Before jumping into a market, look into its peak sales periods, how consistent the sales prices among top sellers are, and how the reviews in the market have been changing. With this information, you can better determine what kind of expectations to set, how much inventory to order, and what kind of hurdles to look for throughout the course of a year.
Obviously a product like Candy Canes is seasonal, but looking at sales trend data across the market for Jewelry Boxes, you’ll see similar seasonal trends as it is a heavily gifted item. Shower Caps are declining in average price, from a high point of $29 to a current average of $14.50. Liquid Measuring Cups have experienced a drastic drop in average reviews, which indicates newer sellers ranking among the top sellers.
All of these trends are imperative to understand before entering a market, and the implications are endless. If you aren’t too concerned with cash flow and want sales influxes during different months of the year, highly seasonal items may be right up your alley. Or, when debating between sourcing Product A and Product B with Product B having a higher review rate, you may choose to enter that market because barrier to entry will continue to increase at a faster rate, meaning you can hold your market share more easily in the future.
Analyze the Barriers to Entry
One of the largest barriers to entry in any given market is review quantity, as reviews are increasingly difficult to obtain for new sellers. For sellers who want a relatively low barrier to entry, markets with higher sales and lower reviews are preferable. These markets make it easier to gather the necessary reviews to be competitive. A great measure of the barrier to entry is the number of reviews relative to the number of sales, or what we call the Sales to Review Ratio.
A high Sales to Review ratio signals an easier market to enter. A low Sales to Review ratio indicates a tougher market to enter. To calculate the Sales to Review ratio for the “Spiralizer” market, we will take the average monthly sales for the top sellers in the market and divide it by the average review quantity (1,500/2,000) to get a ratio of 0.75. For “First Aid Kit,” divide the average monthly sales by average reviews (1,000/300) to get a Sales to Review Ratio of 3. So in this case, the First Aid Kit market is relatively easier to enter than the Spiralizer market when it comes to the number of sales and reviews. Market Intelligence simplifies all of this for you by showing you the Sales to Review ratio for each product.
Other barriers to entry will be relative to the resources you have available. Maybe you’re limited by your budget and want a low upfront investment, maybe you don’t want to compete with Vendor products, or maybe you can’t sell in a specific gated category without approval. Be sure you understand what it takes to compete in the category before jumping in.
Make Sure the Numbers Work for You
Success is relative. If you aspire to build a 10 billion dollar business and end up with a 1 billion dollar business, you may feel unsuccessful. But with the goal of building a 100 million dollar business, that 1 billion is an enormous success. Obviously understanding your goals and setting your expectations plays a huge role in your success.
Before launching your next product on Amazon, determine how much you want to make and how quickly you want to compete with top sellers. With your goal numbers in mind, you can more easily rule out markets that don’t fit the bill. Stuck in your quest to find profitable products? Check out Viral Launch’s Product Discovery, the best Amazon product finder in the galaxy, which allows you to filter for products, keywords, brands, and categories that fit your exact criteria.
In your market research, be sure to check out the initial investment requirement, revenue potential, barrier to entry, margin opportunity, average review rating, market trends, sales year-over-year, and any red-flags, such as if Amazon is an active seller. While one product may look like the perfect addition to one seller, it may be unachievable for another. Only you can determine whether or not a product is a good fit for your business. In order to make sure a product meets your goals and make a confident sourcing decision, it is crucial to understand the data.
Viral Launch is an end-to-end solution and the premier platform for Amazon success. Our mission is to establish our clients’ brands as the most powerful brands on Amazon through data-driven decisions and sophisticated, scalable execution. Best known for the unparalleled results of our launching platform, Viral Launch also provides the most sophisticated seller software on the market with the data we’ve accumulated from over 27,000 launches. We strive for continuous innovation, increasingly impressive results, and unwavering integrity. We treat every client relationship as a privilege and resolve to keeping your business at the heart of every decision.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
If you enjoyed this content, consider joining us at PROSPER Show, March 13-14, 2018 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Recent Comments